Goddamn You, Goddamn We, Goddamn Us All

At the new digs, the water runs brown when you open the tap and there was a Ford Focus with a smashed out back window and a ratchet strap holding down the back end that got towed away recently. Spiders inhabit the place. Ants invade through the quarter inch gap between the door and jamb and roam the shag carpet like amphibious vehicles in choppy surf. Speaking of the water, you could but probably shouldn't drink it and I don't and so I live like some unhinged hermit using bottled, distilled water from a gallon jug to brush my teeth. Food is an ongoing mystery. I will buy ready made sandwiches for 10 dollars and a bag of chips for 2.50 and this will stretch for 3 days at least. Sometimes, I find pieces of sandwich on the floor, likely the draw for the ants. You pick it up, put it away, marvel at how much you've eaten. I'm down to 148 pounds in full clothing, shoes, and daily carry.

The river is blustery and the silt whirls up like popped smoke and curls in twisted mini-cyclones along the streambed. I went there yesterday and walked the sand. Eric Satie's Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes supplied the soundtrack and I wandered around aimlessly and wept. An eagle sat perched in its nest, hopefully atop an egg or, better yet, warming a fully hatched chick. A magpie called from the bush, unseen, eventhough I addressed her. There was a rubbish pile, seemingly from a small motor repair shop and among the rubble was a notebook whose front cover was affixed with a former felon's prison ID badge. In my probabilistic stroll, I passed a man sitting on a folding chair at the treeline. He had been close enough to possibly mistake my call to the magpie as a greeting to him but said nothing as I passed by. Another enigma. Another character. Both of us NPC's in each other's MMORPG. 

Down at the river, scrawled on a bridge pylon. It is my natural inclination to agree, but reality keeps refuting my hypotheses. This idea would be so easy if it were true, and the weak part of me wishes it were, but it's not. It would be so simple to write everything off like some sullen emo-wracked teen or some degenerate divorcee. I will say that I am heartened by the goodness in the other, even someone as terrible as the North Carolina BBQ food truck woman who sounded like my mother when I asked, already knowing the answer, if the bucket of iced tea was sweet. We had a laugh and I noticed the "Trump 2024" sticker on the inside of the truck. Nice lady. Good food. The fucking duality of man.

Yesterday was busy. I saw this dummy compete in his final home soccer game for high school where he got an assist and, late in the game, had two quality scoring chances where the ball sailed on him. Not by much, but enough to clear the crossbar. Unfortunate. When I opened the Zuck machine yesterday morning in the futon bed that's too small such that my feet dangle off the edge like some Raymond Carver protagonist, I saw a bevy of varsity soccer photos and this was one of them and I laughed and I cried like some demented inmate confined to the SHU. He finished high school, not without serious forbearance on everyone but his part, and I've never been more proud of him and more fearful of how life is going to ruin him. But that's just the negativity speaking.

Go cop the new-ish Kendrick record and pre-order the new QOTSA joint.